thought was so enormous," he said afterward, "that it seemed like a
dream--like dwelling in the clouds--so remote, so unattainable, so
exalted, so visionary."

Also, like Mohammed, he had a period of preparatory solitude. Soon after
the first exhibition of his reaper, he bought a tract of land and farmed
it alone, with two aged Negroes as housekeepers. Here he lived for more
than a year with no companion except his reaper. He seemed at this time,
too, to have resolved upon a life of celibacy, for I find in one of his
letters an allusion to two young ladies of unusual attractiveness. "They
are pretty, smart and rich," he writes, "but alas, I have other business
to attend to!"

[Illustration: THE VIRGINIAN BIRTHPLACE OF THE McCORMICK REAPER.]

The two things of which he stood most in need were money and cheaper iron.
So, after thinking over the situation in his lonely cabin, he decided to
build a furnace and make his own iron. His father and a neighbour joined
him in the enterprise. They built the furnace, made the iron, and might
have forgotten the reaper, if the financial earthquake of 1839 had not
shaken them down into the general wreckage. The neighbour who had been
made a partner signed over his property to his mother, and threw the whole
burden of the bankruptcy upon the McCormick family, crushing them for a
time into an abyss of debt and poverty.

Cyrus McCormick gave up everything he owned to the creditors--everything
except his reaper, which nobody wanted. So far his vision of wealth was
still a dream. Instead of being the possessor of a million, he was eight
years older, and penniless.

There were four sons and three daughters in the family, and the nine of
them slaved for five years to save the homestead from the auctioneer. Once
the sheriff rode up with a writ, but was so deeply impressed with their
energy and uprightness that he rode away with the dreaded paper still in
his pocket.

Up to this time Cyrus had not sold one reaper. As Mohammed preached for
ten years without converting anyone except his own relatives, so Cyrus
McCormick preached the gospel of the reaper for ten years without success.
Then, in 1841, he sold two for $100 apiece. The next year seven daring
farmers came to the McCormick homestead, each with $100 in his hands.

This brilliant success brought the whole family into line behind Cyrus,
and the farm was transformed into a reaper factory. Twenty-nine machines,
"fearfully and wond